Talk:Scanning tunneling microscope

Untitled
A reader's question: "as illustrated in fig 1". Where? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.6.90.18 (talk) 18:07, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

I figured out how to put the equations in, and now my next barrier (heh) is to figure out how to get my images loaded up. To respond to the question about NIST, I have heard about this, but I cannot say that I know enough to judge. All that I know is that Binnig and Rohrer got the Nobel Prize, so apparently there is a large community that credits them. However, that does not mean that conventional opinion is correct in that assessment; if you believe that Young et al. ought be mentioned, I would be glad to see you make the proper adjustment to this page. I only changed the text on this page completely because there seemed to be some concern about the previous version of the page not having references for the information. I did not mean to remove mention of NIST to take any credit that may be due. Thank you. Electronegativity 04:11, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

I noticed there was a sentence in the article about the NIST guys, and then when I loaded the page again, the sentence was gone... I think it might be important to mention that stuff. It is really worth checking out the original 1972 paper - R. Young, J. Ward, and F. Scire, Rev. Sci. Instrum. 43, 999-1011 (1972). Their SPM was called the "topografiner" and worked using field emission rather than tunneling, but in the paper they observed electron tunneling and speculated about the high tip/sample distance dependence of the interaction and how useful this might be. Binnig and Rohrer moreso just overcame the experimental problems inherent in using tunneling to do real microscopy. -Scott —Preceding unsigned comment added by 160.94.96.186 (talk) 21:11, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

I changed the text section of this article. I replaced it with my own text, complete with all references. I did not remove the images, nor did I add any more. If I learn how to add fancy equations, I hope to add them in the future. Electronegativity 05:20, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

I didn't change it, but I think using the term "stylus" in the intro is confusing and should instead be replaced with "tip".

I removed the following text from the beginning of "Overview":

"Despite the questionable and self-serving actions of the Swedish council in awarding other europeans a Nobel for the invention of the STM it and scanning probe microscopy was invented by a group at NIST (at the time the National Bureau of Standards) in the mid-sixties in Gaithersburg MD. The work done by IBM Zurich were important improvements but derivative at best. The greater advance over the first SPM inventors was the later invention of the AFM by Cal Quate of Stanford."

I am not certain whether the above statement is true, however, the language seems to be severely biased, and the following link to NIST's website would seem to suggest that they themselves do not share the perspective of the author of the above text:

http://physics.nist.gov/GenInt/STM/text.html

Unfortunately I forgot to log in before I removed the above text, but remarks can be directed to me all the same. Ptomato 03:23, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

It may be good to speak about the different modes of the STM, vacuum conditions... I will try to find graphs and good explanations, I will be very happy to have somebody correcting me or reading drafts

I believe the last two paragraphs of the overview section are copied directly from NIST's website; is that kosher? Tobinmarcus 22:42, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

I tagged the article with the copyright thing, wasn't sure whether to do that or just delete the last two paragraphs so I'll let someone more experienced decide. Tobinmarcus 01:04, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, I decided. I removed the last 3 paragraphs which is what was the copied part. That's all that is necessary. The rest can stand on its own, but will need some expansion to show the inventor, etc. DGG 08:05, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
 * forgot to mention--this sort of thing with non-cordinated parts and low-quality or copyvio sections tacked on is generally the results of vandals messing with an article. It isnt all that uncommon, unfortunately. Be bold in removing the copyvio parts if the article is obviously something important. If necessary, remove the whole text and leave a stub. The right version is likely to be somewhere in the page history. I'll keep a look out for the vandals. Good work in spotting it.  DGG 08:08, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Isn't "viewing" a pretty strong word for what a scanning tunneling microscope does? We don't consider a bathymetric map "viewing" the bottom of a lake. All the STM is really doing is making a topo map of the surface of the sample. That is hardly "viewing" the sample. I think that "mapping" or "creating an image of" would be more appropriate. Scitch (talk) 21:55, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Where it says "won its inventors, ... the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1986[1].", the reference does not relate to winning the prize at all...193.137.24.32 (talk) 13:06, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

I just used the same STM setup today that is shown in the "University of St. Andrews" photo (not at St. Andrews though), and I must say that they did not cleave the platinum-iridium wire very sharply. It looks rather blunt. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.84.39.218 (talk) 02:29, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah, it's not very "pretty" for an STM image. Both images need a scale bar (or at least for the size of the field-of-view to be mentioned in the caption). An brief explanation in the caption of the gold picture of what the structures are would be nice. Gruntler (talk) 19:48, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm thinking of taking fig 1 out entirely and replacing it with one of these famous images since they clearly illustrate the atomic manipulation properties of the STM. I'd also be nice to have something where the atoms throughout a plane are clearly visible, not fuzzy like the ones in the gold picture. Any particularly famous ones? Gruntler (talk) 20:04, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

reference to not existing figure??

A big part of this text is probably copied from the book by Chen on STM (ref 4). But the so called Figure 1 is missing. [...] Let us assume the bias is V and the barrier width is W, as illustrated in Figure 1. [...]

Can someone fix this, or otherwise delete the ref. from the text. --Jaapkroe (talk) 13:53, 22 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I deleted the reference. Is the tunneling text in fact copied from Chen? If so it should be removed. It's not very well-written for Wikipedia anyway so it'd be no great loss.Gruntler (talk) 11:18, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

The second section, tunneling is too technical for an average reader. It has good info, but should be expanded to be more readable throughout. -24.130.51.254 (talk) 20:15, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

PSTM "These include photon scanning microscopy (PSTM), which uses an optical tip to tunnel photons"

This sentence is fully misleading. Two different techniques exist

STM induced Light Emission - where the light is collected and analyzed as emitted from the tunnel junction.

SNOM (sanning near field optical microscopy) - where light is passed through a small opening with the opening much smaller than the optical wavelength (which might be a tip but need not to be). however, this is not a tunneling effect but a rather classical one and described in the model of the Herz Dipol as the near field - therefore its name.

Apart from these two techniques nothing what could be called a photon scanning (tunneling) microscope exist. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.176.73.82 (talk) 01:29, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

The whole section entitled principle of operation cites reference 4, which none of the math is in. it looks like whoever wrote this bit found this page http://www.fkp.uni-erlangen.de/methoden/stmtutor/stmpage.html (under theory) and quoted the first literature piece he found. If someone could dig through the rest of the literature references and find where this is written it would add a lot more credibility to the entry. Failing that we should really remove the section entirely. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.97.47.141 (talk) 15:59, 7 April 2010 (UTC)
 * It would appear that both are based on Intro. to STM by C. Julian Chen (reference 4 at the moment), everything cited appears in the book on pages 3-6 (1993 edition). Possibly it isn't in the google books preview? Sheepe2004 (talk) 15:20, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Greyscale "All images produced by STM are grayscale"

This is nonsense/misleading. STM produces maps of some physical quantities. It does not produce optical pictures, greyscale or otherwise. Greyscale is simply one of possible pseudocolor mappings, which just happens to consist only of shades of grey. 147.251.76.0 (talk) 12:18, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

Amateur Projects
I feel that this sentence in the introduction, "STM can be a challenging technique, as it requires extremely clean and stable surfaces, sharp tips, excellent vibration control, and sophisticated electronics," although mostly true, mistakenly gives the impression that STM is an inaccessible technology. Many very innovative hobbyists have created their own STMs, some for very cheaply. I attempted to add a clause to the end of that sentence to this effect, but Materialscientist removes it stating it violates WP:NOTHOWTO. I do not feel that adding this information (with no instructions, just the statement) violates WP:NOTHOWTO. Materialscientist, can you back this up further at all? I agree it is inappropriate to describe in wikipedia how to accomplish many tasks, but I think it is very important that wikipedia not convey that these tasks are more difficult than they are. I do not think it is wikipedia's place to discourage home science. I intended the links only as citations, so my edit would not be reverted; I realize now I did that improperly and am editing a third time with more correct citations. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.65.133.99 (talk) 13:07, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

"too technical"
I learned the first basics about STM, but didn't find the paragraph too technical. I needed exactly these details (the formula). And I don't even study physics, but chemistry. I would be sad, if these worthy details would be removed... --Minihaa (talk) 16:41, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

This tag seems to be first added by revision in 14th april, 2010 by 24.130.65.122 and dated by bot in september 2010, and has not been modified since. It has not been discussed either, apart from here. Since there has been no other complaints of this section being too technical, I will remove this tag in few months, if no one complains here. (reason: #3 template added in error) -Yyy (talk) 11:52, 25 October 2018 (UTC)


 * It’s too technical for me; but that’s not a request for change.
 * Is it an “Electron” microscope, or is it a different category?
 * MBG02 (talk) 05:51, 27 October 2018 (UTC)


 * STM is a scanning probe microscope, it scans surface (like SEM) with a probe (sharp metal needle)(unlike any electron microscope) by mechanically moving probe against sample. Interaction between probe and sample is electric current. More widely known (and more practical) type of SPM is atomic force microscope. Electron microscopes operates in vacuum and uses electron beams. This one does not require vacuum, although for most samples vacuum is required (most surfaces oxidizes in air too fast). In ideal case, there is electric current between 2 atoms, one in probe and one in sample.
 * That "principle of operation" chapter is mostly about dependence of current (the measured parameter) of:
 * voltage,
 * distance between probe and sample
 * other properties of probe and sample
 * -Yyy (talk) 12:19, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Atomic_resolution_Au100.JPG
I believe the image of gold desperately needs a scale bar that indicates how big (nm^2) the picture is.

While all other relevant parameters are mentioned (Bias Voltage etc.) this is the most important one in my opinion. Using STM one often has periodic artifacts, therefore I am not sure whether the really small dots represent atoms or only the large ones. I am new to Wikipedia and not quite sure how to contact the author about this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Paul Freyberg (talk • contribs) 09:32, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

Request semi-protection for editing
Someone keeps vandalising the summary with “shreks most famous invention” instead of whatever it should say. I don’t know what is supposed to be there so I haven’t reverted the edit, but I think we should protect it because it’s a pretty popular page in the science community as far as I’m aware. Androvax (talk) 14:52, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

Gallery Update
Hello, I was wondering if it's interesting to add to the gallery images of ensembled structure. For example the Quantum Corral, A Boy And His Atom, some classic company logos like IBM or NIST. The last three may not really provide a lot of physics insight, but the first one does. One could also consider adding a spin-polarized atomic image - I have several of these, but it might be considered promotion of my own work. What is the community's thought on this? 80.114.174.240 (talk) 13:20, 22 April 2023 (UTC)


 * One or two imgs (not overly processed, if possible) that illustrate a new concept would be great to have. Bear in mind that images need to be (nearly) free of copyright, which usually means your own work and nobody else's work. Upload at Commons. Thnx, Ponor (talk) 03:53, 23 April 2023 (UTC)